'From the same place as before,' Micus said from above them.
Kaanyr flinched and darted to the side, ripping Burnblood free. He peered upward and spotted the angel standing upon a thick branch in one of the odd, sloping trees. The cambion's companions reacted just as quickly, jumping into defensive postures and freeing their weapons.
'From among the conniving fiends he calls friends,' Micus continued, 'like the ones you're wandering around with, Tauran.'
The sound of footsteps behind Kaanyr drew his attention away from the deva in the tree. He spun and saw three hound archons fanning out to surround him. Two more materialized just behind them.
'It's a trap!' the cambion shouted. 'They're surrounding us!' He backed away, considering his options. He risked a quick glimpse in other directions. Perhaps a dozen more dog-headed warriors stood on guard; a handful more instantly appeared as Kaanyr watched.
The enemy had position; the group was encircled.
'Time to surrender,' Micus said. 'You cannot keep running, Tauran.'
'Micus, look around you,' Tauran said, his frustration evident in his tone. 'Look what has happened here! Isn't it obvious now that we have to find this priest? We have to stop him.'
Kaanyr took a couple more steps back, away from the archons and toward his companions. The hound- headed warriors followed him, wary. As he retreated, the cambion reached into his tunic and pulled a wand free. He made the decision to speak the command word and fire glowing missiles at the nearest foe, but he couldn't quite muster the will.
Damn it to the Nine Hells! he silently seethed. 'Tauran!' he growled softly, hoping the angel would understand without tipping his enemies off that he could not attack them. 'What's the word?'
'Micus, this is the proof we needed!' Tauran said, ignoring Kaanyr. 'Isn't this enough to go back to the High Council and convince them?'
'The High Council is already convinced,' the other angel replied. 'They know something is up, just as you said. But they also believe it is very unwise to trust these two. They have given me explicit instructions to bring them back to the Court. With your help or without it.' Micus's last words were slow and deliberate.
Wise up, you fool of an angel! Kaanyr thought. They're never going to listen to you! Give the go-ahead!
'I gave them my word, Micus,' Tauran said. 'I must honor that.'
'No, you must not,' Micus replied. 'Not to them. You have other duties, like obedience and loyalty. Those must come first.'
'I'm sorry, Micus. I don't see it that way.'
'Then you leave me with no choice,' Micus said, his voice sounding weary. 'I'm sorry, too. Take them!' he shouted. 'You know your orders!'
Kaanyr snarled, and he almost didn't hear Tauran's voice ringing through the din of battle cries as the archons rushed at him.
'Fight, Kaanyr! Fight and flee!'
There we go, the cambion thought, smiling as he raised the wand. That's what I like to hear.
He uttered the magical phrase to trigger the wand and sent four glowing missiles streaking directly at the nearest hound archon. The arcane projectiles whistled through the air and slammed into the creature with staccato popping sounds. The warrior barked in pain and twitched away, stumbling to the ground.
Kaanyr didn't waste time watching to see how badly he had injured that one. He spun to another, swinging Burnblood. His smaller, lighter blade whipped toward the canine head, but the archon knocked it away with his sword. That was just what Kaanyr had hoped the creature would do, and he spun back around, getting inside the sword's reach. He rammed his enchanted blade into the archon's chest.
Before the warrior could even gasp and go wide-eyed, Kaanyr had his boot planted against the archon and yanked his sword free again. He leaped away as three more of the dog-headed warriors tried to close with him. He leveled the wand at them. Just the gesture of aiming the wand made the trio draw up, and Kaanyr used the delay to leap into the air and begin rising, drawing on his innate magic to escape their reach.
The creatures recognized the feint and renewed their efforts to come after him, but Kaanyr sent a volley of shrieking missiles in their direction, and it was enough to get him beyond their blades. He spun in place to scan the rest of the battle. He could see his companions, three isolated pockets of resistance within a swarm of archons. He had faith that Aliisza could extricate herself. Of the other two, he cared not a whit.
Tauran had commanded him to flee, and flee he would.
And I won't stop until I get well away from him. For good.
The cambion reached into his tunic and fumbled free a bit of gauzy fabric wrapped around a tiny glass tube sealed with wax. Kaanyr didn't waste time with the seal. He simply snapped the tube in half, freeing the smoke that had been trapped inside. As the two arcane components merged together, he swirled the whole thing around himself.
Kaanyr transformed, becoming insubstantial. He felt odd, disembodied, but he had experienced such before and ignored the sensations. He could see in every direction at once, all around, above and below. He watched the hound archons struggle in vain to see where he had gone, and he wanted to laugh, but he had no voice.
Vhok continued to rise into the air, sliding through the foliage of the strange, twisted, angled trees. He could not travel very fast, but he did not care. He was virtually invisible, particularly with the swirling mists all around, and every moment that he slipped farther away from the fighting made him feel safer, more at ease.
When he was well above the tree tops, Kaanyr searched for some landmark, a direction by which he could navigate. He wasn't sure where he wanted to go, but he wanted to disappear silently and completely from Tauran's grasp forever.
He initially considered the World Tree. It was nearby and it offered so many possibilities. But that was where Tauran had intended to go, and Kaanyr did not want to risk a reunion with the angel.
No, he decided, I think another direction entirely is in order.
He had just begun drifting toward the nearest edge of the great, forested island-intent on reaching its underside to hide-when he saw two angels rise from the trees and fly in his direction. Like Tauran and Micus, they were astral devas, and it was clear to Kaanyr that they were homing in on him.
Damnation, he thought.
Before the cambion could react, one of the angels gestured at him, and his spell of gaseousness dissipated. In corporeal form once more, Kaanyr plummeted. He got his wits about him in time to invoke his levitating ability before he crashed into the canopy below.
Apparently, that was precisely what the two angels expected him to do, because in the next instant, he heard the second one speak a single word. It echoed in the cambion's mind like a thunderbolt.
Everything went black.
Myshik and Kashada followed close behind Zasian as they moved along the passage between planes. The shadow-mystic's footfalls, already faint, became lost amid the clomping of Myshik's boots.
The walls of the passage remained close at hand on either side of the trio, and Zasian imagined he could have forgone the light and felt his way easily enough. The tunnel twisted and turned occasionally, ascending at times and dipping sharply at others. Once, it grew so narrow that Myshik was forced to slip free from his breastplate to squeeze through.
'What catacomb do you lead us to?' he grumbled as he tugged his armor back on. 'You said nothing of tight spaces before.'
'We will be free of this confined space soon enough, Morueme,' Zasian replied.
As soon as Myshik had donned his armor, they resumed their travels. As if to prove the priest a prophet, they rounded a bend and discovered light seeping from the next turn ahead. Zasian quickened his pace and reached the opening of the tunnel. Stepping free of it, he took in the surroundings.
Much like at the other end, the trio stood within a narrow gorge of rich, dark wood rising up to either side of them. The trail continued out of sight ahead. Also similar to before, gray mist filled the air, casting a pall over the place. Unlike the moist air that hung within the House of the Triad, though, the mist was much more silvery.
Eventually the canyon walls began to drop away from the sides, until at last the priest and his companions stood upon what appeared to be a great ridge of the same woody landscape. Much of the ground was bare, but in spots, the same large, angled trees jutted from it. Lush green tangles of some sort of thick bracken covered other
